Integrating Integrated Assessment Modelling in Support of the Paris Agreement: The I2AM PARIS Platform

Abstract

Calls “to do science differently” and democratise the research process have proliferated in the last decades, especially in the context of climate science and policy support. This new arena demands more participatory procedures to expand the knowledge-making beyond researchers and experts. One way that science has started to interact with society has been the increasing number of online platforms that have emerged as alternative forums, providing the opportunity for engaging a variety of tools, models, results, and preferences. This study presents I2 AM PARIS, a platform dedicated to delivering on comprehensive and comprehensible scientific information in support of climate policymaking. It does so by bringing the climate-economy modelling community together in a common workspace, with shared protocols, data exchange formats, and nomenclature, and by making the used and produced information accessible to and digestible by all stakeholders. To this end stakeholders, who lie at the heart of the platform, have co-designed the presentation of the platform in order to respond to pertinent questions in the climate debate co-created with stakeholders and the scientific processes together. Oriented on documenting detailed capabilities of integrated assessment models, providing access to input datasets and assumptions driving them, and offering ad hoc visualisation and databases of their outputs, I2 AM PARIS emphasises transparency, reproducibility, inclusivity, plurality, and comprehensibility.